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Printing's Earlier Roots
East Asia printed centuries before Gutenberg, but his cheap, durable type paired with a press is what made mass production practical in Europe.
4 steps, drawn by Nib. Read it here, or watch him draw it. Updated .
1woodblock
Printing did not begin in Mainz. By the Tang era in China (618-907), printers carved a whole page into a block of wood, inked the raised characters, and pressed paper onto it. Each block made one page, over and over.
Woodblock printing in China predates Gutenberg by many centuries.
a common mix-upPrinting was invented by Gutenberg.
If a woodblock carves one whole page, what happens to the block once the book is finished?
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It only works for that page, so it must be stored or thrown away; nothing in it can be reused for a different page.
2clay type
Around 1040, a Chinese craftsman named Bi Sheng made movable type: separate characters, each its own small piece, arranged into a page and reused. This is the same core idea Gutenberg later used. His pieces were reportedly made of baked clay.
Movable type existed in China around 1040.
a common mix-upMovable type was a European idea.
3the timeline
Korea went further. By 1377 Korean printers made a Buddhist text, the Jikji, using movable type cast in metal. That is about sixty to seventy years before Gutenberg's work in the 1440s. Metal type is sturdier than clay, so Korea had durable reusable letters long before Europe did.
Korea printed with metal movable type by 1377, roughly 65 years before Gutenberg's press.
Using the dates, about how many years separate Korean metal type (1377) from Gutenberg (1440s)?
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About 63 to 73 years, so roughly sixty-five.
4why Europe
So why did Europe's printing take off so dramatically? Chinese writing uses thousands of different characters, so a printer needed an enormous stock of type to set a page. Gutenberg's alphabet needs only a few dozen letters, which can be cast cheaply in quantity, and he added the screw press and oil-based ink that grips metal. The system, not any single piece, was what made mass production practical.
A small alphabet, cheap durable type, and a press made printing scalable in Europe.
a common mix-upGutenberg's achievement was thinking of movable type first.
Gutenberg wasn't first to print. He built a system that fit Europe's alphabet and made printing cheap enough to change a continent.